I worry that most Lemmy instances are too young/inactive for this kind of bot yet. I don’t think we’re past the tipping point where the people commenting will automatically outweigh the bots, and I don’t think those bots are fun unless they’re dramatically outweighed by normal human interaction.

That's an interesting way of putting it that I didn't immediately consider.

I don't necessarily like them, but I'm not really all that against them, either. If we don't have the activity to balance out bot input, however, it might be reasonable to limit them one way or another. It seems to me like a worst-case scenario, but if a community or thread has what feels like a noticeable amount of bots, that would be a turn-off for me.

If the community decides to limit bot traffic either partially or entirely, it might be good to revisit that decision later on if there's an upward trend in users and activity.

The novelty bots on Reddit were a mixed bag for me. I struggle to think of any that I genuinely found amusing, most of them were at best annoying. The exception might be some of the reply bots on some meme subreddits I was on (r/wetlanderhumor and r/cremposting). There were also a few that, for some reason, really got under my skin. I think the ones that really frustrated me were the grammar bots that regularly replied with irrelevant corrections, and that one Shakespeare bot that "shakespearified" your comment with wildly incorrect early modern English grammar.